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Avoiding homework with code and getting caught

alistair.blog

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Re: Avoiding homework with code and getting caught

#71

Post by mizzao »

pfoof wrote: post #66

Reminds me of the times when at my school (2010) there was WLAN but only the teachers had the password. I was nagged by my schoolmates as the most proficient computer nerd and my IT teacher said that if I cracked the wifi password, I would get an A+ from IT classes for all three years. Backtrack 4, Atom N270, some deauthenticated Windows XP and 13 hour long dictionary attack did NOT do the trick. But what I learned i…

Sounds like you might have wanted to try social engineering on the teachers instead? Humans are always the weakest link

Re: Avoiding homework with code and getting caught

#73

Post by madmod »

In high school I was trying to make an app to scrape my grading system Skyward and ended up finding a trivial auth bypass that let me see anyones grades. Knew the school would turn me into a villain if I was discovered even though I was on student council and an honor student so I emailed the principal and got a meeting with him. For some unknown reason my poc didn't work in the meeting so during the meeting I found a second auth bypass. They paid me $75 for finding the issue and told me to try to hack the teachers side of the system next. Lots more to the story if anyones interested.

Re: Avoiding homework with code and getting caught

#74

Post by mechanical_bear »

user3939382 wrote: post #51
mynegation wrote: post #6

Everyone has to start somewhere. These young lads “worked around” couple of educational platforms. 35 years ago I was hex dumping ZX Spectrum game saves and disassembling the program files to get more lives, infinite lives or just more ammo or whatever. That seemed easier and more interesting than getting good at games themselves. I sometimes wonder if that kind of “not approved” intellectual curiosity can be used to…

I still do this on my iPhone. As long as you keep the bit count the same i.e. changing 12 points to 99 the code signing passes and you don’t need to do anything but edit the hex.

Could you provide some more detail? Sounds interesting.

Re: Avoiding homework with code and getting caught

#75

Post by malthuswaswrong »

aabbccsmith wrote: post #26
club_tropical wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The threat of suing very much loomed in the background if they did not cooperate. Hegarty is just more slick, buttering them up with (well deserved) praises and attention from grownups to get voluntary cooperation.

I didn't really get that vibe, especially when we called Colin. He was super friendly. But then again, we didn't want to test it and we complied immediately =)

No post body was provided.

Re: Avoiding homework with code and getting caught

#76

Post by schoen »

jrockway wrote: post #3

I love the veiled threat to "take a legal approach" in the last email. If I ever take over the world, there will be a law where if you imply that you're investigating litigation, you have to file your case within 24 hours or the ability expires.

There is a much weaker disadvantage for a party threatening litigation, which is that the recipient of the threat could choose to sue for declaratory judgment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaratory_judgment

Re: Avoiding homework with code and getting caught

#77

Post by visarga »

cercatrova wrote: post #15
mynegation wrote: post #6

Everyone has to start somewhere. These young lads “worked around” couple of educational platforms. 35 years ago I was hex dumping ZX Spectrum game saves and disassembling the program files to get more lives, infinite lives or just more ammo or whatever. That seemed easier and more interesting than getting good at games themselves. I sometimes wonder if that kind of “not approved” intellectual curiosity can be used to…

Heh, I still use game trainers for games that have annoying grinds. The Assassin's Creed games come to mind. There is no way I'm spending 150 hours on grinding just to progress through a level gated region of the map.

Some people just want casual gaming and having part of the map locked off forever is depressing - in my case, Forza Horizon 5, never bothered to do the grind, just drive around aimlessly, but I want all the cars and interesting places to be open. Maybe a "casual mode" setting?

Re: Avoiding homework with code and getting caught

#78

Post by pabs3 »

mynegation wrote: post #6

Everyone has to start somewhere. These young lads “worked around” couple of educational platforms. 35 years ago I was hex dumping ZX Spectrum game saves and disassembling the program files to get more lives, infinite lives or just more ammo or whatever. That seemed easier and more interesting than getting good at games themselves. I sometimes wonder if that kind of “not approved” intellectual curiosity can be used to…

Hex-editing save game files to cheat at Civilisation 1 was what got me into open source, where I started working on improving the hex editor I was using, frhed, which was GPL.

Re: Avoiding homework with code and getting caught

#79

Post by andreareina »

user3939382 wrote: post #51
mynegation wrote: post #6

Everyone has to start somewhere. These young lads “worked around” couple of educational platforms. 35 years ago I was hex dumping ZX Spectrum game saves and disassembling the program files to get more lives, infinite lives or just more ammo or whatever. That seemed easier and more interesting than getting good at games themselves. I sometimes wonder if that kind of “not approved” intellectual curiosity can be used to…

I still do this on my iPhone. As long as you keep the bit count the same i.e. changing 12 points to 99 the code signing passes and you don’t need to do anything but edit the hex.

That sounds more like a data format with length-prefixed fields.
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